


a second coming is at hand

by Morbane



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, Gen, elements of came-back-wrong, hints of Clark/Bruce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 07:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8278069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: Bruce attempts a resurrection.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lando](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lando/gifts).



Bruce helps with the funeral: the real one. He provides people who can prepare the body and not ask questions about its oddities, and he provides a little of the personal touch when it's time to transfer Clark's casket to the funeral home in Smallville, run by folks who're third-generation in the mortician business, who're just a bit territorial about the care and comfort of their own.

He doesn't enjoy it, but he promised Clark he'd take care of Martha Kent. This isn't an _easy_ way to do that, not really, but it's close enough.

And it makes it easier when he comes back to dig Clark up.

The timing's ridiculous, but there was only a brief window in which General Zod's ship was available for him to scour and glean; he hasn't had long at all to analyse what the alien ship yielded up. So it's only after the ceremony that he learns about the importance of sunlight - that it might make the difference for Superman between dead and - alive? Reborn? He isn't sure.

Alfred helps. So do one or two others, people he trusts. They know about the state funeral, though they have it backwards which funeral was the real one, which the fake. There’s a certain kind of lie that doesn’t trip you up the further you get in it - it only gets stronger, feeding on itself. 

_Superman’s dead_.

Indeed, the flesh under Bruce’s hand is cold. So cold that it doesn’t just chill, it _stings_. 

_Endothermic_ , Bruce thinks. There’s something at work in the alien body, a subtle, unknown set of processes, like a factory din underground.

And if Bruce is right, and he knows how to revive Clark Kent, he’ll always be a little undead. Just as some people right now are convinced he’s just resting, gone, hiding, impersonated, some people will always think their hero died forever grappling with Luthor’s creation. 

He doesn’t yet know if they’re wrong.

He has something built - it’s basically a greenhouse, set at the top of one of his towers (not the one that bears his name, obviously, but not too far from its shadow). When Clark’s set up in it, he appears as the starring exhibit of a museum. Continuing, absurdly, Bruce thinks of Snow White. 

"Choking on your own knowledge," he addresses the crystal cage, the glass box holding Schrödinger's Kent. "Choking on the loss of innocence."

Snow White was revived by a kiss - or depending on the version, something rather more invasive, or intimate. Clark's lips are a warm, healthy, colour; they curve invitingly; but he has nothing to fear from from Bruce on that front. He remembers the hungry ice of Clark's flesh, unconsciously ruthless. Sunlight is everything; but warmth will sustain.

 

Watching over Superman affects his daily routine, but not his nights. The alien isn't going to wake in the dark. If he wakes - returns - resumes, odds are that he'll regain consciousness when Bruce isn't there. Bruce hangs a little bat symbol on the wall, somewhere the light will hit, somewhere that'll catch Superman's eye.

Weeks go past and nothing happens. Bruce thinks of that inviolable flesh and wonders if he imagined the wrong fairy tale. Cities could fall around the superman - _have_ fallen - only to leave him unmoved. 

A set of instruments as delicate as seismographs measure - something. Low-level radiation. Very, very slight gaseous emissions - but less than that of a person breathing, and not carbon dioxide, anyway. They fluctuate. Until the day they swerve.

 

He doesn't make it back to his tower in time for the titan - the leviathan? - to wake. The monitoring instruments send out their silent scream, and then go dead.

Bruce evacuates the building; approaches. The Clark whom he helped to bury knew his heartbeat; would know it at this distance. 

If it's Clark in there, and not a slate wiped clean, or something else.

He clutches a clumsy, sharp, green blade. He steps inside.

The figure is hovering. Staring at the bat symbol on the wall, hung there like a cheap decoration out of season.

"Superman," Bruce says.

"Batman," his compulsion replies. "I'm alive," he announces, as amazed at his own existence as Frankenstein's monster. "I knew I was dying." Then, "Does anyone else know?"

It doesn't matter that Bruce does his best to breathe evenly; the alien will have registered the spike of alarm. 

"Your girlfriend doesn't know," he says, stalling. "Your mother doesn't know."

"Good," Clark says. An utterly unreassuring reaction.

But Clark looks at him, and his expression is quite human. It's wry, it's peaceful, it's a little sad. It's the face of the messiah from the news broadcasts, shown floating above the people he saved, and Bruce has to _resist_ the way it works on him, to connect and to calm him.

"I need time," Clark says. "Don't tell them - yet - will you?"

Then he's _gone_ , glass falling all round the centre of the room from the ceiling (which was bulletproof, not that that matters), like it's something beautiful.

Batman is the only person in the world who knows that Superman is alive. If this goes wrong - if he has unleashed something worse on the world than walked it before - he has only himself to blame.


End file.
